This Oprah-Approved Pepper Mill Grinds Spices With Just the Push of a Button
When it comes to cooking like a pro in your own kitchen, there are a few tried and true strategies always to follow. You’ve probably heard most of them before: Invest in the good knives, brown your meat, salt your pasta water like the ocean, deglaze your pan (that’s where all the good flavor comes from!) — the list goes on. One chef-worthy strategy also on that list? Using fresh ground spices. It’s something I’ve known that experts rely on for years, but an extra step that I never thought I had the time (or energy) for in my own cooking.
While there’s no denying the ease and convenience of using pre-ground spices, you’re actually cheating yourself out of big flavor and aroma that could take your dish from good to chef-worthy. Here’s why: Many spices (think: pepper, cumin, coriander, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, and more) get their flavor from their oils, which immediately start to degrade and evaporate the moment they’re ground. So, if your pre-ground spices have been sitting in a jar for a year-plus (likely longer, if you’ve purchased them at the grocery store), they’ve already lost a ton of their flavor, meaning they’ll have less of an impact on your recipe — and you may need to end up using more to score your desired flavor, which can get expensive.
Still, grinding your spices fresh for each recipe can add a timely extra step to your cooking routine, and the traditional mortar and pestle method isn’t exactly modern or convenient. Enter, the answer to your pro-chef aspirations: FinaMill’s Battery Operated Pepper Mill & Spice Grinder.
The handy gadget recently came onto our radar when it was named one of Oprah’s Favorite Things for the holiday season, and boy, are we obsessed. Aimed at helping you extract flavorful goodness with ease, FinaMill relies on patented interchangeable spice pods that can be easily added and removed from the battery-operated body to grind out mega flavor with just the push of a button.
Each “spice pod” (there are two in a set, but more can be purchased separately if you need them!) is made from BPA-free plastic and comes equipped with an adjustable knob on the bottom, allowing you to cater the coarseness of your grind to the specific spice or recipe you have in mind. To use, you simply fill up the spice pod with the whole spice of your choosing, then attach it to the grinding body, where durable ceramic grinding elements will go to work extracting taste and aroma you’ve only dreamed of for your favorite flavor-packed recipes, including Vegan Tikka Masala, Cumin-Roasted Carrots, and Creamy Peppercorn Sauce.
The best part? FinaMill is super aesthetic and available in six gorgeous hues, so it looks great on your Thanksgiving table if you want to give guests the option to grind fresh pepper over their turkey or pink Himalayan sea salt over their mashed potatoes. Each spice you pour into a pod will stay fresh for months, so you can rest easy knowing that you’ll never be forced to use stale, flavorless spices again.
Over 1,000 five-star reviewers on Amazon are just as smitten as we are with this smart gadget, with many expressing just how easy it’s made it for them to kick their home chef game up a notch. “I’m pretty picky when it comes to kitchen gadgets,” one reviewer writes. “They need to be functional, easy to use, and look nice in my kitchen. This electric spice grinder does all three. It grinds up spices in a flash and the refillable spice pods make cleanup a cinch. It is sleek and beautiful, and clearly well-made … I have always struggled with other options for spice grinders and never really found anything that is as versatile as this.”
Trust us (and Oprah) — this is one kitchen gadget that deserves a place of prominence on your holiday wish list. Or, if you’re in the habit of changing lives, snag it for a few people on your Nice List (and yourself, of course) and watch the rave reviews come in.
This post originally appeared on Kitchn. See it here: The Oprah-Approved Pepper Mill That Grinds Spices at the Push of a Button